Last night, former President Donald Trump was blocked from a clean sweep of Super Tuesday primaries by former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley who won the state of Vermont.
Trump won 14 Super Tuesday states: Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Massachusetts, Maine, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Arkansas, Colorado, Minnesota, California, Alaska, and Utah. His margins of victory ranged from 14 to nearly 70 percent.
While not all of the Super Tuesday’s 865 delegates have been formally allocated, Trump’s big wins propels him further towards the nomination. He is on track to become de facto nominee within two weeks.
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald J. Trump speaks on Super Tuesday at Mar-a-Lago Club in West Palm Beach, Fla., on March 5, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times
Speaking to supporters at Mar-a-Lago, the former president said the pundits have called the day’s series of landslide victories “conclusive.” He went on to call for unity in the Republican Party without directly calling for Haley to exit the race. Consistent with speeches of late, he did not mention Haley’s name at all.
Haley, who spent the night in Charleston, South Carolina, with campaign staff, did not publicly respond to the almost-wipeout on the night. Having only pledged to stay on through Super Tuesday, she is no doubt formulating an exit strategy.
Her campaign, though, shrugged off Trump’s calls to unify, saying “Unity is not achieved by simply claiming we’re united.”
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“Today, in state after state, there remains a large block of Republican primary voters who are expressing deep concerns about Donald Trump. That is not the unity our party needs for success,” Olivia Perez-Cubas, campaign spokeswoman, said on Tuesday night.
President Joe Biden, meanwhile, expectedly won all Super Tuesday primary contests, except American Somoa.
But like Michigan, protest votes were cast in multiple states against President Biden during the Super Tuesday for his handling of the Hamas-Israel war.
According to early results, over 19 percent of Minnesota voters chose “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary.
Protest votes were also recorded in other states: Alabama (6 percent), Colorado (7.6 percent), Iowa (3.9 percent), Massachusetts (9.2 percent), North Carolina (12.7 percent), and Tennessee (7.9 percent).
The behavior of these protest voters in the general election remains uncertain. While some individuals plan to stay home, others have expressed their intention to vote for President Trump.
On to down-ballot races, in the close-watched California Senate primary to fill the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Republican Steve Garvey, a former baseball star, advanced to November’s general election. California Democrat Rep. Katie Porter was knocked from the race.
Heading into Super Tuesday, Schiff’s supporters bolstered the baseball legend’s campaign to achieve an easier Republican-Democratic match in November instead of an all-blue battle.
While the seat is heavily favored to Democrats, Garvey liked his changes in the general.
“My opponent has been advertising he wants me, and he’s mistaking kindness for weakness,” Garvey said of Schiff at his watch party. “He’s like the pitcher that throws me a 70 mile-an-hour fastball and then watches as I run the bases.”
In North Carolina which held gubernatorial primaries for both parties, Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who was a furniture manufacturer until 2018 when his meteoric political rise began, won his party’s nomination by a double-digit margin.
Democratic State Attorney General Josh Stein also easily defeated his challengers.
Over in Texas, moderate GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) of CD-23 failed to clinch his party’s nomination—at least for now. Because neither he nor YouTube personality Brandon Herrera got more than 50 percent of the vote, they’re expected to face off again in a runoff election.
Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas) will face incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in November after winning the state’s Democratic primary on Tuesday.
Although no Democrat has won a statewide office in Texas in 30 years, Democrats have cast Cruz’s seat as vulnerable based on his tighter-than-expected 2018 race against Beto O'Rourke.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), fresh of losing her bid for Houston mayor, managed to hold onto her party’s nomination on Super Tuesday amid a rare challenge within her party.
Republican Rep. Barry Moore (R-Ala.), a Freedom Caucus member, won the incumbent-on-incumbent primary contested between himself and Rep. Jerry Carl (R-Ala.) Carl to represent a newly redrawn 1st Congressional District in southern Alabama.
With his primary win, Moore will square off against Democratic Party candidate Tom Holmes in November. The Republican typically wins in the southern Alabama elections.
Read more takeaways here.
—Sam Dorman, Lawrence Wilson, Janice Hisle, Brad Jones, Nathan Worcester
US Republican presidential hopeful and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks during a campaign rally in Portland, Maine, on March 3, 2024. Photo by Joseph Prezioso / AFP
WHERE WILL HALEY'S SUPPORTERS GO?
Now with Haley’s campaign nearing its end, The Epoch Times’ Terri Wu looks at where her supporters will go after she bows out.
Haley has amassed over 2 million votes since the GOP primary began, including about 750,000 before Super Tuesday.
Will these votes go to Trump, Biden, third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy, or no one?
The Epoch Times’s interviews on Super Tuesday show that many of Haley’s voters are against Trump and may not vote for him regardless.
“I don’t like either of the other two candidates. I haven’t seen a lot of good performance by either one of them,” Rex Shipley in northern Virginia’s Loudoun County told The Epoch Times, referring to the presumptive nominee on both sides: President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. “So I think we need someone new in office.”
Shipley knows that Haley’s campaign is dwindling, but he said: “I don’t see a path forward. But I’m gonna try to do my part.”
He asserted that if Trump becomes the Republican nominee, he would vote for Biden in the general election. He’s a registered Republican but votes independently.
In Dallas, Texas, Shannon McKinnon said he voted for Haley “to get out Trump.” He said he is a registered Republican but often votes Democratic.
Even if the former United Nations ambassador doesn’t win Super Tuesday in Texas or elsewhere, McKinnon wants her to stay in the race.
“I think this time around, I’m a never Trumper,” he said. “He’s a horrible human being.”
Age isn’t a factor when it comes to Biden’s ability to serve in the White House, he said. That’s because those who work with the current president say his cognitive abilities are fine, which is good enough for McKinnon.
Some Republicans hope that Haley’s primary voters won’t vote for Biden.
In Utah, U.S. Senate candidate Brent Hatch suspects the vast majority of Republicans will vote for Trump.
“It’s a binary choice: Trump vs. Biden. It’s a pretty easy choice,” Hatch told The Epoch Times.
However, Utah state Sen. Mike McKell (R-Spanish Fork), who is on Haley’s Utah Leadership team, isn’t so optimistic.
He told The Epoch Times: “I think it’s still hard to say, and you’re seeing that across the nation. There are certainly a number of Republicans who are not looking forward to supporting President Trump. But you know, I don’t hear any of them pushing for President Biden, either. So, I don’t know.”
—Terri Wu
